Paternity
by CS091
Summary: Jack retires and UST is no longer U, but something in Jack's past has long-term effects. Short and *** COMPLETE ***
1. Telling Daniel

Title: Paternity  
  
Author: CS091  
  
Email: cs091@lycos.co.uk  
  
Category: Angst, Romance  
  
Warnings: Heavy duty angst. Language. Reference to sexual situations, but not graphic  
  
Pairing: Sam/Jack  
  
Season: Post Daniel's descension. But no series 7 spoilers  
  
Spoilers: Everything up to and including Season 6  
  
Rating: PG - 13... just to be safe  
  
Summary: Jack retires and UST is no longer U File Size: .doc is 44K AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a departure for me. I don't generally write S/J. So tell me if it sucks. DATE COMPLETED: 27/07/2003 Disclaimer: Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.  
  
Paternity.  
  
My retirement party turned out to be quite an occasion. I had returned from P2X whatever, with a shot ACL. In my knee. It had been dodgy for years. Janet had done what she could, but I had reached the time when I couldn't make mission fitness any more. I could still walk and run in a shuffling, hopping, limping sort of way, but the Air Force insisted that members of active teams should be able to run the 100 metres faster than the Olympic record. Well, not quite, but as far as I was concerned it might as well have been. So I had retired. Again.  
  
And the SGC had thrown a little party for me. Turns out, not many people actually get to retire from our department. Mmmm, I wonder why? As a number of aliens were invited, it was held on base. Normal rules were relaxed and a generous amount of alcohol was allowed into the mess, for off duty personnel only. Which was nearly everyone. I consumed far more than I should have, but, hey, you only retire ... bad reason. This was going to be the last time anyway.  
  
Carter must have sunk a few too, because, well to put it bluntly, her inhibitions were suppressed somewhat. In fact she became very uninhibited. As did I. It was like we had to make up for seven years playing by the rules in one, glorious, mad fling. So we did.  
  
By 2300 all the personnel who were on duty the next day had left for home. By 2400 most of those not working the next day had gone. There was me, Sam (I could call her 'Sam' now; I was officially retired and no longer in her chain of command), George (General Hammond told me to call him 'George' now, he was no longer in my chain of command), Daniel, Jonas and Teal'c, sitting round a table in the mess. Sam was actually sitting on my lap, although I can't recall how that came about. Daniel was asleep, his head on his arms, leaning on the table; he is a cheap date. Teal'c said he would get him to a VIP room and then go and kel'no'reem. He still does that, even though Junior is no longer 'in residence'. Habit, I guess. Teal'c more or less told Jonas to help. Teal'c is very astute. As is George. He yawned widely and said he was going to hit the sack. So off he went.  
  
Which left me and Sam. Alone. Moderately intoxicated, with alcohol and with each other. With seven year's of unresolved tension no longer held in . tension by regulations. I turned to Sam and said "You want to get out of here?"  
  
"You bet," she replied and getting to her feet pulled me out of the room. Along with all those things we said we would keep in the room. Not that room, of course, but they were all coming out of whatever rooms they were kept in.  
  
The first VIP room we tried had to have Teal'c and Daniel in it, didn't it? I mumbled something about checking Daniel was okay and backed out as quickly as I could. We avoided the next door, the walls are way too thin, and let ourselves into the room next to that. Clothes were shed almost as quickly as our inhibitions and, yes, we did it.  
  
I'm not proud of it. Hell, I wasn't even proud of my performance, alcohol rarely improves satisfaction. I woke up the next morning, nearly the next afternoon, feeling like I had taken advantage of Sam. I had promised myself the evening before, that, no matter how fast things progressed, I would tell Sam all she needed to know before she embarked on an intimate relationship with me. I have got a department store full of skeletons. Sam knew about some. The worst, the most rattlely ones, were completely hidden. And I had had sex with Sam without telling her, without giving her a sober moment to reflect on what she was getting herself into.  
  
So, I had done the 'Let's slow things down a bit' talk. She seemed okay with that. Things had moved way too fast. We took a step back. Went out to a movie, dinner, walks in the park, that sort of thing. Public places. Kissed goodnight, but avoided anything else. I had told Sam a lot about some of my skeletons and was working up to the biggy. It all worked really well for nearly three weeks. And then Sam told me she was pregnant.  
  
Sam was delighted. After Jolinar, she wasn't sure she'd even be able to have kids at all. To have got pregnant so quickly had put all her worries to rest. She would be able to have the large family she had always dreamed about. "Well," she giggled, "two or three children would be wonderful." Oh *crap*!!!  
  
I didn't think I reacted too badly. I was surprised, I said. It was so unexpected, but not unwelcome, no, no, no, you know how much I love kids. One of my own again, so soon, is just so unexpected. Yes, wonderful, but unexpected.  
  
Maybe she didn't buy it, because that evening Daniel came round to my place with a box of 24 bottles of beer, to 'talk'.  
  
Daniel has always been a cheap date. He gets drunk on a bottle and a half of low alcohol lager. I still don't know how he managed to get me drunk that night. Maybe he kept pouring his beer into the pot plant by his chair, or recycling the same bottle each time I handed him a fresh one, but I didn't notice anything. Maybe being ascended had increased his alcohol threshold, I can't tell. In any case, I was drunk and he wasn't. I thought I had had about eight bottles, but if Daniel had somehow passed his back to me, I might have had a lot more. I definitely had more than an eight bottle hangover the next day. However, I digress. I was drunk, not falling over drunk and not slurring drunk. I didn't think it mattered, I was at home, so I didn't have to drive anywhere. The state of drunk I had reached was loose tongued drunk.  
  
Daniel was talking about something totally unrelated, minerals on P2B 563 or something and then, suddenly changed direction completely.  
  
"What's up with you about the baby anyway?"  
  
Before I could get my brain in gear or censor my tongue in any way, it had popped out of my mouth.  
  
"It's not mine."  
  
Daniel's jaw fell to the floor and bounced a couple of times. "I beg your pardon?"  
  
Vainly backtracking I tried to cover up my blunder. "It wasn't my idea. We would have been better off waiting." Poor, I know, but I was drunk.  
  
Daniel wasn't. "That's not what you said, Jack. And I don't believe that would bother you anyway. Come on, you said it wasn't yours. Explain."  
  
"It's not my baby, Daniel."  
  
"Did Sam tell you that?"  
  
"NO. No, no, no, I hope she doesn't even realise I know. There must be someone else, I don't know who it is and I don't really care."  
  
"But. you and Sam did. you know."  
  
"Yeah, just once, the night of the party. Released tension and all that. Then we decided to slowed it down a bit. But three weeks later she tells me she's pregnant."  
  
"So it could be yours."  
  
"No, Daniel, I can't have any kids." I was mumbling so badly, I'm surprised Daniel could make out what I was saying at all. Daniel, however, had all his faculties at peak efficiency.  
  
"What about Charlie?"  
  
"That was before Iraq." Iraq was not one of my favourite places. I glanced at Daniel's face. He needed more. "Sara had a hard time with Charlie. We decided to leave a bit of a gap before trying for another. Then I was sent to Iraq. When nothing happened after a while, when we had got back to normal, we went to see the doctor, then a specialist and then a special department. Whatever Sadam's boys did to me, it left me with a zero sperm count. And I mean zero, no live ones at all. I went though all kinds of treatments. Nothing made any difference." Daniel hadn't said a word. The silence between us was like a yawning chasm. My loose, drunken tongue had to fill it. "Don't you think it's kinda odd, someone as kid-mad as me only having one of my own. When Charlie died, I lost the only chance I'll ever have of being a dad."  
  
"God, Jack. I'm so sorry. I didn't know." Daniel looked like it was his fault.  
  
"I was going to tell Sam, real soon. It's why I wanted to slow down. Give her a chance to rethink the whole idea of 'us', especially as she seems so keen on having kids. I would have told her before, only things happened so fast that night and it's not something I advertise. I mean. 'Hello, I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill and I'm sterile.'" In my drunken state, it sounded amusingly like an introduction at an AA meeting. I started laughing. "I'll have to start a group of 'Steriles Anonymous'!" I looked at Daniel again and stopped laughing. Tears were amassing in his eyes.  
  
"What are you going to do?"  
  
"Nothing. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this. I care about Sam more than I care about who is the biological father of her baby. As long as the baby remotely resembles something that I could have fathered, I'll let sleeping dogs lie. If the baby looks more like Teal'c, I'll have to rethink, but Sam's too clever to try something like that."  
  
"You think Sam is deliberately trying to foist another man's child on you!"  
  
"No, Daniel, I don't think anything of the sort! Sam's not like that. Between me and whoever he is, I don't think Sam knows which of us has actually fathered the baby. But at the moment it looks like she has chosen me to do the 'Dad' bit. I can't have any children of my own, but I swear, neither Sam nor the baby, will ever have any reason from me, to suspect that I know the kid isn't mine."  
  
"I hate to burst your little bubble, Jack, but Sam has already worked out that there is something wrong with you attitude to her being pregnant. She thinks either you don't want her any more, or you don't want a baby trying to replace Charlie."  
  
"I can pass it off as surprise at her getting pregnant so quickly. I'll make it up to her. You can tell her you came to see me and told me what a shit I was being." As I said, I was drunk. I should have known Daniel would never go for a tale as weak-assed as that. Or as much removed from the truth.  
  
"I am not going to lie to Sam," he said, placing a great deal of emphasis in the "I". "Do you really think that a lie, about something like this, is the best foundation for a relationship?"  
  
"I can only not lie, by accusing Sam of sleeping with another guy! Is that a good foundation?"  
  
"Jack, it would have been before your party. She wasn't cheating on you or anything."  
  
"Did you know she was seeing someone else?"  
  
"No, she hadn't mentioned anyone to me."  
  
"So you don't know how serious it was?" Daniel shook his head. "So it could have been anything from a one night stand or someone who would be better for her than me. I guess most other guys would be better for her than me." I was also getting maudlin drunk by this time. "Look at me, Daniel. Over ten years older than her. Carrying enough emotional baggage to keep a psychologist busy for a lifetime. Unable to make the next promotion, so retired as unfit for active duty. And so dumb I can only understand one word in ten the comes out of her mouth."  
  
"Jaaack," Daniel actually ruffled my hair, "Don't be so hard on yourself. Let Sam make the decision. If she wants you, don't question her judgement. The only essential thing is that you are totally honest with her. Stick to the facts, own up about the sterility. Let her decide what happens next."  
  
"You don't think she'll just walk away?"  
  
"You said it, Jack. She has chosen YOU to do the 'dad' bit."  
  
"Yeah, she has, hasn't she?" I smiled. Things might not be quite as bad as I thought they were. "Is it too late to go round there now?" Once I decided to do something, I prefer to get straight onto it.  
  
"Yes, Jack, it is far too late. And you are drunk. Sam's not going to like an inebriated confession from you. Even if either of us was in a fit state to drive." Yeah, there was that. Except I don't think Daniel had had much to drink at all. 


	2. Telling Sam

I slept pretty late and it took a fair while for me to get over the hangover. The day looked like I felt; grey and miserable. Daniel cooked bacon and eggs for brunch and stood over me while I ate. I didn't eat much. I wanted to heave. After a couple of mouthfuls, I did.  
  
"You can't go and see Sam looking like crap," he told me, as I returned from the bathroom. "Take a while to wake up properly and feel like a normal human again."  
  
I was feeling pretty shaky about the whole 'confession' thing and if it hadn't been for Daniel shoving me in my truck and making me drive over to Sam's house the next day, I think I would have chickened out. We pulled up outside her house in the pouring rain and I put my jacket on and dragged Daniel up the drive with me. Sam came to the door after I had rung the bell, well after Daniel had rung the bell. We stood there for a while, Daniel and me getting soaked and Sam looking confused.  
  
"Can we come in out of the rain, please?" Daniel eventually requested.  
  
"Yeah, come on in." Sam didn't seem too pleased to see us. "Why do I get the impression this is a delegation?"  
  
"Jack's too chickenshit to come on his own."  
  
"Am not!"  
  
Luckily, Sam stopped us before Daniel and I got too deep into a 'yes, you are - no, I'm not' exchange; they have been known to last hours.  
  
"What do you want?" She was obviously still mad at me. I looked at Daniel and he nodded and gave me a shove with his elbow. We looked for all the world like a couple of schoolboys in the head's study, about to own up to a practical joke on the Latin Master.  
  
"Sam, I'm sterile. I know your baby can't be mine." Sam looked as if I'd hit her.  
  
"You think I've been sleeping around like some." She didn't finish the sentence. She just slapped me in the face and told me to get out. The impact of her hand across my face sounded like a gunshot, muffled slightly by distance and like the gun was inside, in a bedroom and I was outside in the yard. I turned around, opened the front door, walked out and shut in gently behind me. Daniel was outside the house before I got the truck started, but I ignored him running down the drive and drove off.  
  
I drove for hours. The rain showed no sign of letting up and it was getting dark by the time I found myself outside a familiar cemetery. I parked the truck in the car park and walked to Charlie's grave. Sara must have been fairly recently as there were flowers in the vase, faded but not totally dead. The rain continued to fall heavily, but to be honest I didn't notice. I stood there for a time and then walked the 20 or so yards to the nearest bench. I sat for ages, looking at my hands clasped in my lap. The gun was missing, but even I could see the similarity to the scene after Charlie died. I don't think I cried; it's hard to tell when the rain is pouring down your face. I just felt empty again.  
  
It was more or less fully dark before I made a move to leave. I was soaked and shivering uncontrollably. Never mind, one of the things I liked about my truck was the wonderfully efficient heater. I made my way back to the truck and reached in my jacket pocket for the keys. No keys. Pants pockets. No keys. Jacket's other pockets. No keys. Inside the truck I could see my mobile phone and wallet on the floor. They must have fallen out of my jacket earlier. Where were the keys? I must have had them to lock the truck up, you can't lock it without them. I made my way back to Charlie's grave and then to the bench, searching all the way. In the dark I had no chance. Further searching would have to wait 'til first light.  
  
I was not at my most sensible. Sensible would be to find a public phone and get someone - even Sam - to come out and fetch me. She had a spare key to my house, as did Daniel and even Teal'c. And in my house were my spare truck keys. But as I said, I was not sensible. I decided to wait in the back of my truck. In late october, in the pouring rain.  
  
I climbed into the back of the truck, covered myself with a tarpaulin that I kept there and tried to sleep. The cold and wet kept me awake. Well, that and the voices. Daniel saying "Be totally honest with her, Jack." "Don't question her judgement." "Let her decide what happens next." And Sam replying "You think I've been sleeping around like some whore." "Get out!" "Get out!" "GET OUT!" And a sound like a gunshot. I jumped up and the accumulated rain ran from the tarpaulin over my shirt and pants. Shit, I was cold. And hungry, I hadn't eaten anything since the couple of mouthfuls of bacon and egg, which in any case, I had thrown up.  
  
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because Daniel found me and woke me up at about 0200. By then, I looked like shit and felt like shit. I had stopped shivering, which anyone with any survival experience will tell you, is bad. Your body has stopped bothering to try to get you warm.  
  
"Jack," a distant voice kept calling, "Jack, for God's sake, wake up!" Daniel shook me until I reacted.  
  
"Piss off, Daniel. I've only just got to sleep." At least, that's what I wanted to say. I think it sounded more like "Pisov, Danl. Olly dust god leap." Daniel knew what I meant. Fortunately for me, he also knew what I needed. Twenty minutes later, I was in his apartment, wrapped in warm, dry clothes with a mug of warm, sweet, hot chocolate in my hands. I was also more lucid.  
  
"I went to see Charlie and I lost my keys in the dark. I was waiting until it got light." Daniel wasn't impressed.  
  
"Jack, you are an ass. Sam and I have been looking for you for hours."  
  
"Does she know you've found me?"  
  
"Yeah, I phoned her as soon as I got you in the car. She'll be here soon."  
  
"Why does she want to see me? She told me to get out."  
  
"I told her she was being a bit harsh. I think she knows she overreacted." Then the door bell rang. No prizes for guessing who it was. Daniel open the door and then made himself scarce. I looked at Sam and she looked at me. I could tell she had been crying. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was red.  
  
"Jack," she almost threw herself at me, so I just held her tight. "God, I was so worried. Then Daniel told me where he had found you. I'm so sorry. Daniel told me what you said."  
  
"What did I say?"  
  
"That you care about me more than you care about who is the biological father of the baby."  
  
"Well that's still true."  
  
"Jack, it can only be you. There has been no-one else for years."  
  
"I told you. I can't father any children. Something they did to me in Iraq stopped me producing any live sperm. Total, Sam. I have had more tests, done on me and my poor excuse for sperm, than a prize bull. I was told no reversing, no getting better in time, no hope, never." I tried to look her in the eye, but I couldn't.  
  
"Well, Jack, unless this baby is the next messiah, something has changed." Sam was smiling, making jokes. She was positive this was my baby. "I think," she added, "we should get Janet to do some up-to-date checks."  
  
So we did. Later that morning. 0830. As soon as Janet arrived for work. She complained that it wasn't her specialty and strictly speaking I wasn't her responsibility any more, but, God bless her, she did the test in record time. She made me look at them through the microscope. Hundreds of the little fellas, wiggling away as happy as you like. Active and viable. All the right shape and fit as fleas.  
  
"I can send a sample off for a formal sperm count, if you like, but there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with your sperm at all, sir." Janet sounded as happy as I felt. "I can only surmise that something has happened that reversed the damage you sustained in Iraq."  
  
"Kanan," I said, "it must have been Kanan. That virus wasn't the only thing he cured. I never thought I would be thanking him for something like this."  
  
"I tell you what, Jack," Sam said thoughtfully, "I'll let you tell Dad about the whole thing!"  
  
Oh, God! Tell Jacob *and* Selmec. The two of them would be insufferable. Then again, maybe I would be too! 


End file.
